Gun Girls

Gun Girls.
A short film by Victoria Harwood and Lucy Newman. 1997. 5 mins.

Gun Girls is showing at the ICA on Saturday 14th Feb 2017 as part of the London Short Film festival programme, White Trash Girls, Gun Girls & Riot Girls.

“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.” Jean Luc Godard

What is it about?
The pursuit of free will. Its visual, fun and from the female point of view. Sci-fi, low fi kitsch. (The guns are water pistols.)

Synopsis
Two androids are sent to Earth on a mission. The mission is aborted and they become Gun Girls. Gun Girls have a brief taste of Earth life before their battle with El Pimptronic, their former alien controller

Locations
Southend-on-Sea
The Geffrey Museum (fire alarm went off)
Trafalgar Square, The Mall
Tooting Bingo
Duxford Air Museum
Heathfield, Sussex
New York
Heathrow Airport
Camberwell, London
Royal College of Art
Charing Cross club
Kings Cross, London

Ideas
Trashy, control, robots, rebirth, girl-power, dysfunctional domesticity, earthlife, recreation, poses. 

We saw
Pepi, Luci y Bom – Pedro Almodovar
Harryhausen animations
The Avengers / Captain Scarlet / The Man from Uncle
50’s Sci Fi
Faster Pussycat Kill Kill Kill – Russ Meyer
Comic strips
Daisies (but afterwards)

We looked at
Jeff Koons
Carnivalesque ideas
Kitsch (in clubs) and parody.

Materials
Mostly analogue. Low fi. Super 8, cardboard, silver paint, silver foil, cotton wool and face paint.
Props from boot fairs.
Stop motion models.
Early photoshop and After Effects.
Special effects are real – explosives and firecrackers.
A mix of methods and techniques.

Places
An empty London. Round the back of Covent Garden and Denmark Street. Low security at Heathrow. The towers stand in NY. British seaside resort. Fun fair.

Costume
A store of film costume of Shuna’s.
A mix of eras. 1950s sci fi, 1970s Pimptronic, 1960s domestic, 60s spies.
Wigs.

Process
Messing about with costumes and super 8 cameras. The shots then the storyboard. Applications for funding. Self funded. Vic organising locations. Telecine in Soho. Sound at the RCA.

Rejected
80’s dancing disco scene
A cooking scene – a mess of food and food processing – not quite the Semiotics of the Kitchen.

At the time
Shared house
Vic  – working in film wardrobe depts and theatre and production design, pre RCA
Lucy – scanner and graphic designer in multimedia, post RCA
Charles Barker – painter – writing films

ARTWORK